Why Catholics Leave the Church

22 comments:

What in God's green Earth is that? "Liturgical dancers"??? Incense is preserved for the Holy, the Altar of the Lord...and what is it with the Jazz music, where is Jesus on the Crucifix? We don't have "processional cross" we have a CRUCIFIX! All of the girl altar boys ::facepalm:: And was that the Deacons with their wives? Why was that Deacon dancing in???And then Bishops...please don't tell me those are Orthodox Bishops???? AND THAT DOES NOT LOOK LIKE AN ALTAR! That was a gathering of worshiping themselves....not GOD!

Is this a Charismatic Mass? Sorry but this looks more like a Protestant service than a Catholic Mass. Dear Jesus, forgive them as they do not know what they are doing.... :(

I guess this is what Trads call "clown mass"? :(

Okay now I'm going to wash my eyeballs with chlorine and listen to some chant...eekk!

I reply: Not quite. When they refer to a clown mass, they mean where a priest actually dresses up as a clown and says the Mass. Believe it or not, there are actually cases of this. Of course that doesn't mean that the liturgy depicted here isn't atrocious. It is.

I am happy, to get to answer this. People ignore them. problem with the Priest. They do not know who to talk to. There is these little groups, Unless you are in their circle of friends. Than you cannot get in their groups. They feel unworthy of the Church.

It would be much more grown up to simply ask non-practicing Catholics why they do not go to the parish anymore. That question has already been asked, several times, in several countries. Liberal liturgy is not anywhere near the top of that list. Child rape, however, is. Let's deal with the truth.

Also, perhaps such liturgical garbage has led to the abuse crisis we're still cleaning up from the past generation.

dudes in spandex or robes or whatever, dancing up the aisle with incense like a bunch of nymphs isn't exactly the type of thing that appeals to masculine guys. So this type of stuff has been going on for many years in lots of places, driving men who ARE sure of their sexuality out of the Church by the boatloads, leaving behind, you guessed it, a much higher than normal percentage of men who AREN'T so sure where they stand on such things, and what do you have...child abuse by the clergy. Check out the book "Good Bye Good Men" as a possible starting point for such a connection.

I won't name names, but it is easy enough to guess, it is no surprise that in a certain diocese where the ultra-liberal bishop who recently reached retirement age, new vocations and mass attendance is at rock bottom. If the abuse crisis was the real issue, we would have seen Mass attendance bottom out across the board, but it hasn't. You can set your watch to it: flaky liturgy and heterodox teaching goes hand in hand with dried up vocations and attendance. Then there is the lesson from the Episcopal Church. When they started appointing homosexual bishops and recently ordaining transgendered they predicted people flocking to the Episcopal Church. Well, those flocks are either stuck in traffic or coming to church disguised as empty pews. Fewer people would be leaving if the buildings were on fire. There is no mystery why: all of us are indoctrinated with secular progressivism from the moment we wake up and turn on the tv or the radio. Why should anyone waste an hour on Sunday hearing about it?

Re-read his comments. He didn't say robes made one unsure of their sexuality. He's saying quite rightly, that flaky liturgy like this drives many men away from the Church. This is proved by the fact that the more looney a diocese is, the fewer vocations it produces.

So you admit it is improper? Thanks. That's the lion's share of the argument. As far as not causing child abuse, I'll agree conditionally. Meaning, unserious liturgy is an indication of unserious fatih, and when the faith is unserious, virtues like fortitude are weakened, and when those are weakened, instead of coming down hard on abuse, one makes excuses for it and we get the mess we've seen over the years.

I am truly disheartened that you can't see beauty in anything outside of the log in your eye. Father, be assured that you and your ministry are in my prayers and that I truly do respect that you've laid your life down in service of the Church. I simply request for you to attempt to see the beauty of the plurality and multiplicity of the Church, as this annual conference celebrates.

Beauty is a transcendental, and has been understood to be so by many cultures including our Catholic Faith. When something is a transcendental, it means that beauty is objective (and isn't in the eye of the beholder).

While some of the things these folks are doing may be beautiful (dance, for example, can be a beautiful thing) what makes it horribly ugly and NOT beautiful is the fact that it is arrogantly added to a place where it isn't to be done. It is the extreme form of arrogance to say that we know what would work better in the Divine Liturgy than the Church does. So while the individual actions may be beautiful, they are so completely marred by the arrogance that would add them to Mass, that they become objectively hideous.

The Church leaves room for this beauty in the teaching of inculturation in both Sacrosanctum Concilium and the 1994 Vatican document "Varietates Legitimae". I would like to know how much you were involved in the planning of this particular liturgy. If I'm not mistaken, the "competent territorial authority" must review the planning of an event such as this if it were to happen in his diocese. Being that this was in 2010, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles was under the authority of Roger Cardinal Mahony, a former member of the USCCB's Committee on the Liturgy. Was the Mass celebrated at NCYC in Indianapolis this past year "objectively hideous"? If I remember correctly, there was clapping, dancing, guitars, drums, and, God forbid, a piano present! Ask the youth who participated in that Liturgy if it was beautiful. I can tell you that I have asked youth from many parts of the country who spoke of how the music, dance, instrumentation and many other factors added to the beauty and glory of the Mass. I would hope that you would trust the judgment of Bishop Coyne in matters regarding the Liturgy, not merely because of his episcopal status, but his background as well. And I don't think this is why people are leaving the Church in droves, by the way. It's when they see venom being spewed from both sides of the political and theological spectrum and they find themselves in the crossfire. What's so hard about simply living Christ to others? With that, I'll stop rambling. I pray for you and all in the ministerial priesthood everyday. May the Spirit of God enliven your heart in a zeal for love. Peace.

Once a Catholic always but it doesn't mean attending. Our family was once very active, we taught Religious Ed. Each year we would take days to obtain gifts for Christams children in a poor section of Chicago. IT was a giving event of obtaining, wrapping and bringing. Our Church was conducting a pledge drive to build a multi-million dollar center. As the donations flowed we were told this poorer church as others would be closing. I wondered why our church was so greater in importance, why not give donations for the expansion so other churches could remain open, their parisionaers could continue to attend the church of generation of their families? It made little sense, the concern was pushed aside as the Priests continued to use services to push for more money for an edifice over people needs less than twenty miles from us. We became aware how frequnetly after communion memebers would exit, some saying they preferred Father so and so because his services were shorter. We became more aware that for many merely attending was all they felt necessary rather than how they lived their lives. We became more aware of attendance levels by priest performing mass and found some preference based on brevity of the service. For us, money seemed the Church's primary goal, and rituals more important than how we live by the teachings of the Church. It was too much.

Please Pray for My Brother Nathan

O great St. Peregrine, you have been called "The Mighty," "The Wonder-Worker," because of the numerous miracles which you have obtained from God for those who have had recourse to you. For so many years you bore in your own flesh this cancerous disease that destroys the very fibre of our being, and who had recourse to the source of all grace when the power of man could do no more. You were favoured with the vision of Jesus coming down from His Cross to heal your affliction. Ask of God and Our Lady, the cure of the sick whom we entrust to you. (Pause here and silently recall the names of the sick for whom you are praying) Aided in this way by your powerful intercession, we shall sing to God, now and for all eternity, a song of gratitude for His great goodness and mercy. Amen.